this is so far off topic that i don't want to continue. if you are sincerely interested in hearing what i have to say about healthcare legislation and aren't just trying to score rhetorical points by proving that nothing good can ever happen in this country then pm me and i might respond later if i feel like it.
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The Root: 'Hillary Is Not Your White Savior'
- Thread starter Lime
- Start date
We Latinos were told likewise. They didn't do themselves any favors callig her queen and telling us how shes like our Grandmothers
I am so confused right now....
It's not even doing that.
People can cry all they want that they now understand that the current situation was never good and all that but if the only thing done is a stern look why is it better than blissful ignorance?
I fail to see how even treating the issues at the margins is worse than doing nothing and having the issue flare up.
We're having a conversation, that's great but people are still dying and now on top of it we have supreme court judge picks that are going to fuck us over for a quarter of a century at least.
Are these people who take stands and protest also vote next year? If they don't, all they're doing is fuel fires for an even harsher response that is going to have real consequences.
theCalamity
Member
Exhibit 2 is massively dumb. What the hell are they thinking?
Muppet of a Man
Member
Yeah, she pays lip service to it, but her historic actions on crime bills speak otherwise. Her political m.o. to maintain multinational corporate stability certainly doesn't speak to it. Centrists have their priorities elsewhere: maintain status quo in terms of power dynamics and throw their base a bone every once in a while.
Hell, I would have taken it compared to what we have now, as it is definitely a better (less bad) option. I voted for Hillary in the general for that very reason. But I'd much prefer true progressive social and economic reform. I don't want whole subpopulations of people to have to suffer and be treated as second class citizens any longer than they already have.
I would like to ask anyone here who works for or with any civil rights organization and see the obstacles everyday, is there anyone today, in a position of power, who you consider to be doing the right things and moving civil rights forward in a meaningful way?
Its very dangerous this "savior" talk. Even MLK and Malcom X said that the soluution was with the people, and not one person.
Its very dangerous this "savior" talk. Even MLK and Malcom X said that the soluution was with the people, and not one person.
I think we all would. But finding such a candidate is apparently like finding a unicorn. Well, finding one that actually has a chance to win a general election that is.
Hellwarden
Member
Well of course she wouldn't be.
No one person is gonna come along and suddenly fix society. White supremacy isn't gonna suddenly be dismantled in this generation, and honestly, probably not the next. Progress crawls along, step by step, and sometimes things go backwards. Trump is certainly bringing things backwards, but no matter who won the 2016 election things weren't gonna rocket forward. It's not how society works.
No one person is gonna come along and suddenly fix society. White supremacy isn't gonna suddenly be dismantled in this generation, and honestly, probably not the next. Progress crawls along, step by step, and sometimes things go backwards. Trump is certainly bringing things backwards, but no matter who won the 2016 election things weren't gonna rocket forward. It's not how society works.
Speaking from abroad, I think a Hillary presidency would be just as bad as trumps. Not because she's a bad person, but because it would of been likely that she would be in the same position as Obama was fighting against a majority opposition. Additionally the conspiracy hate machine would if gone on to overdrive, the supremacists would of been out much earlier and riots by the right highly likely. The best option would of been Bernie or hell even the libertarians. The only silver lining in this is that trump is proving how ideologically bankrupt the "so called" conservatives has become
TurnipFritters
Member
Yeah well if y'all had rallied around O'Malley we could have had a President untainted by crime bills from the 90s. Maybe.
Wolfgunblood Garopa
Member
We would all prefer real progress. That kind of progress moves very slowly, especially when we dismiss people who actually speak about our issues on the campaign trail. It's demoralizing to be so dismissive considering the challenges we face. Now I'm raising a son who is seeing nazis marching with torches and ramming their car into decent people who are denouncing hate. We aren't in a position to tell Clinton or any other liberal to fuck off with their 'lip service'.
Mammoth Jones
Member
I mean I completely agree Hillary isn't a savior and we shouldn't even be looking for "saviors". Who is most likely to implement policies that will be of least detriment to building up our Communities?
At this point it's the only question that matters. And I mean your alternative is Trump so.....
At this point it's the only question that matters. And I mean your alternative is Trump so.....
Having a second Obama opposed by Congress would still be far superior to what we have now. I'll take a ineffectual government over a ineffectual, racist, environmentally destructive government any day.
This doesn't make sense, Bernie would be going through the exact same (or worse) as Hillary in that theoretical. Also there's the SC pick and all of the non-trash people she would have put in places like the EPA and DoE
Spoken like somebody who's living abroad.
I can definitely see that, especially with the EPA and the Supreme Court appointment. I think Chomsky even said the same thing after the election, that the battle is/will be much harder now than with a corporate Democrat in power.
I guess Fleming tries to argue against the fact that some people just want to go back to sleep if a Democrat is in power, when inequality and injustice are still rampant (albeit to a lesser extent). I think this is still an important point and something that we should not forget. At least I know that a sizeable amount of people are less critical of oppressive measures and imperialistic efforts when it's someone who doesn't rock the status quo.
TurnipFritters
Member
The best option would be Bernie, or the party that's his ideological opposite.
How would Sanders be any better if Clinton would be getting stonewalled?
I agree that it's not that productive to say that things would be much better under Hillary, even though it's immediately, blindingly obvious that the statement is true. She's not the president, we somehow elected a villain out of a saturday morning cartoon, and we have to live in that reality.
On the other hand, the op-ed sabotages itself by using that statement as a framing device, simply because the statement is so obviously true. So I'll take a stab at ignoring the framing and see what's left and what I can get out of it.
As I read it, the piece seems to be arguing for a sort of racism accelerationism, essentially saying that Nazis openly walking the streets is good because now we can acknowledge that racism exists and work on the problem. Ok, yes. With Nazis openly walking the streets, it's very very obvious that racism still exists. But is that actually helpful?
The thing is, we've always acknowledged that racism exists. The problem isn't acknowledging that it exists at all, it's acknowledging that it exists in us. Everyone thinks racism is someone else, something else. "No, racism isn't me hating welfare, it's people in white hoods burning crosses." Does having actual people in white hoods going around burning crosses help with this problem? Or does it let people point in relief and say "there, that's racism. Not me, I'm a good person, now let's get on this problem of voter fraud and restart the War on Drugs."
I'm not entirely sure what the answer is here. Does having Nazis out there and seeing the president support them make people reflect on themselves a bit more? Does it end up helping? Maybe, though the scenario I outline above seems a bit more likely to me. People are bad at self-reflection and good at deflecting.
There's also the question of knock-on effects on other extremists. Does seeing white supremacists and Nazis out there marching, and seeing the president tacitly support them, embolden people who feel the same way? Is this balanced out at all by seeing the pushback from reasonable people? Again, I'm not entirely sure what the answer is, but given that we've seen at least nominal pushback against this kind of overt stuff for years it seems likely to me that seeing the marchers and the support from the president would have a larger effect.
In short, even ignoring the poor framing, I don't think the op-ed is really correct. It doesn't engage in much depth with any of this, and I'm not sure how much the author considered these different possible directions.
On the other hand, the op-ed sabotages itself by using that statement as a framing device, simply because the statement is so obviously true. So I'll take a stab at ignoring the framing and see what's left and what I can get out of it.
As I read it, the piece seems to be arguing for a sort of racism accelerationism, essentially saying that Nazis openly walking the streets is good because now we can acknowledge that racism exists and work on the problem. Ok, yes. With Nazis openly walking the streets, it's very very obvious that racism still exists. But is that actually helpful?
The thing is, we've always acknowledged that racism exists. The problem isn't acknowledging that it exists at all, it's acknowledging that it exists in us. Everyone thinks racism is someone else, something else. "No, racism isn't me hating welfare, it's people in white hoods burning crosses." Does having actual people in white hoods going around burning crosses help with this problem? Or does it let people point in relief and say "there, that's racism. Not me, I'm a good person, now let's get on this problem of voter fraud and restart the War on Drugs."
I'm not entirely sure what the answer is here. Does having Nazis out there and seeing the president support them make people reflect on themselves a bit more? Does it end up helping? Maybe, though the scenario I outline above seems a bit more likely to me. People are bad at self-reflection and good at deflecting.
There's also the question of knock-on effects on other extremists. Does seeing white supremacists and Nazis out there marching, and seeing the president tacitly support them, embolden people who feel the same way? Is this balanced out at all by seeing the pushback from reasonable people? Again, I'm not entirely sure what the answer is, but given that we've seen at least nominal pushback against this kind of overt stuff for years it seems likely to me that seeing the marchers and the support from the president would have a larger effect.
In short, even ignoring the poor framing, I don't think the op-ed is really correct. It doesn't engage in much depth with any of this, and I'm not sure how much the author considered these different possible directions.
El_Tiguere
Member
It has been 'lip service' from liberals who only care about their next million (like the Clintons) who have gotten us here. If we never tell them to fuck off, it would be insane to expect things to change.
It baffles me that so many on the left are stuck on the myopic view that you have to be either for economic justice or for racial justice. The both are intrinsically inter-related. Black people don't want handouts, lip service, or sympathy for the racism. They want jobs and a fair opportunity at the pursuit of happiness. You can tackle both (one fighting corporate power on behalf of workers and one tackling discrimination via the Justice Department on behalf of minorities).
Spoken like somebody who is ignorant due to living abroad.
Firstly, you're assuming that even if Hillary had won the Presidential election, the downticket elections would have remained the same. Which is completely false.
Secondly, President Clinton would not be systematically dismantling every federal government system in place to protect civil rights of the oppressed present from the Obama administration.
Thirdly, President Clinton wouldn't be acting in ways that have white supremacists and literal fucking Nazis celebrating her actions.
I think the point is that even under a Democratic president, white supremacy and other oppressive structures in US society would still be present and functional, so thinking that the problem stops and ends with Trump is short-sighted and blind. The writer is also referring to those people who would continue unaffected with their daily lives if someone else had been president - aka white supremacy and military imperialism are also very much part of the Democratic party, hell, it's even in the fabric of the US society. So people who'd think everything would be fine and dandy without an explicit neo-fascist in the white house, are wrong.
Perhaps this is not a particularly new point, but it bears repeating in the case where people go back to sleep whenever a milquetoast status quo leader is in power. Business as usual in the US is a lot of death and misery, both domestically and abroad.
Wolfgunblood Garopa
Member
Progress is slow. This is how the country was designed. You could easily convince yourself that the slowness needs to be fought against, but that isn't a fight that can be won. While you're fighting it, the forces against progress will set our causes back decades.
Waylon Drums
Member
The more articles I read from that site, the less I enjoy it.
Right? Apparently even examining the political differences between Hillary and Trump means declaring her the saviour of all Black folks and an end to White Supremacy. Absolutely no one says that shit; and I hate the framing of such an important conversation on it; even if it is just click bait.
I'm sorry but that's just blatantly not true.
OrangeGrayBlue
Member
I think the answer depends on if they're marching primarily because they're angry about the long-term de-whitening of America or because they feel emboldened short-term by Trump's political ascension.
Your definatly right on those points, it's just that I can't imagine her presendency been anything but difficult due to the almost rabid conservatives obsession with her.
This country wants single payer so much that in the first state to legalize marijuana and one that has become a reliable democrat state in the last few years defeated a single payer bill 80-20... 80% to 20%.
This country likes the idea of single payer. This country does not like voting for taxes
This country likes the idea of single payer. This country does not like voting for taxes
I'd actually have to agree with them. But I don't think it rationalized the idea of voting in Trump. There's a real regression since his induction
Not great at taking hints, huh?
El_Tiguere
Member
Not great at defending a defunct status quo, huh?
Monocle
Member
Counterpoint: she wouldn't have fucked our climate change research, science funding, education, and foreign policy. She would have broken through a glass ceiling that women of all ethnicities live under. She might have started critical dialogues about the rampant sexism that infects our society and robs millions of little girls of opportunities reserved for boys.
And who's to say we wouldnt have had a best of both worlds scenario where Hillary became a competent and effective president while Trump kept up with the demagoguery and whipped his racist base into a frenzy with his masturbatory rallies? We've already seen how he can't let go of grudges. The man won the presidency and he still can't stop talking about Obama.
And who's to say we wouldnt have had a best of both worlds scenario where Hillary became a competent and effective president while Trump kept up with the demagoguery and whipped his racist base into a frenzy with his masturbatory rallies? We've already seen how he can't let go of grudges. The man won the presidency and he still can't stop talking about Obama.
Muppet of a Man
Member
She was the best choice given the options.
And that is the moral of the story for liberals and progressives. In a country that operates with big tent politics, always choose the best option for the moment you're in. If your candidate of choice doesn't get through the primaries (like mine didn't), you better fucking vote for the next best choice.
Because the other alternatives can send us back 100 years or more.
I don't really buy his argument that white supremacists would still be hiding their basements if Hillary had won. Maybe the Charlottesville stuff would have been less... blatant, but even that was driven by the removal of Confederate statues, which was driven basically created by the advent of cheap cameras allowing white people to see things that are basically unbelievable to a lot of them. And its basically impossible to predict how the GOP would have reacted to her election, let alone the Nazi parts of the GOP (aka the entire GOP).
TheTylerRob
Member
Articles like this prove that faux intellectual liberals can't tell the difference between pushing the envelope several inches and jumping off the cliff to our collective death.
Muppet of a Man
Member
Yes, she's definitely a faux intellectual...you've got her pinned down:
Crystal Marie Fleming, Ph.D., is associate professor of sociology and Africana studies at Stony Brook University and the author of Resurrecting Slavery: Racial Legacies and White Supremacy in France.
If anything, she's warning of pinning hopes on a single person. She is saying to win, we've got to peg ourselves to a progressive platform that the party/liberals/progressives as a whole largely agrees on.
Sirpopopop
Member
One of my old professors in school is still arguing that Trump is better than Hillary. He was a Bernie or Bust.
He even defends the alt-right against Clinton supporters, suggesting that it's the mainstream media that are the true enemies of the Left.
Dude taught at Princeton. So no... just because Crystal Marie Fleming has some credentials doesn't mean she isn't guilty of peddling faux intellectual bullshit as well.
eBay Huckster
Member
these credentials alone do not make her an authority on the issue of whether clinton would've been better for tackling racial issues than [the aftermath of] trump (and i'm being charitable to cast the point of this article as that, and not her attacking a strawman of a point that never existed in the Times op-ed it was penned as a response to) any more than my master's degrees make me an authority on public policy and urban planning
nelsonroyale
Member
Society needs to make big systematic changes if it wants to deal with complex problems, such as income inequality, unsustainable consumption, climate change, etc. Hillary Clinton was a symptoms person rather than a causes...She would have been better than Trump for sure, but she wouldn't have made significant inroads into these problems. Hence, in the long run, shit is still going to hit the fan... The problem is we have a vicious cycle of mal education and ignorance in society...The public at large doesn't really have a grasp of the scale of these issues, and many liberals are so invested in the status quo that they advocate technocratic solutions to problems that need systemic change. Clinton is very much in this position.
eBay Huckster: That hardly disqualifies her...You might be surprised to learn that most academics diversify their research interests following their PhD...and many public experts, those you see on TV, are asked about things well beyond the scope of their particular research.
Tylerrob: That is rather simplistic understanding of change...Having said that, most of the science seems to suggest that we are rushing to our collective catastrophe like never before in ecological and resource terms, and even Obama didn't make much head way on this. That is not to say he wasn't hamstrung by real politik - he was, and even then his legacy is being dismantled, which I think the democrats need to shoulder some of the burden for - but fuck modern political practice obsessed with geopolitics and the economy and the dominance of those destructive economic theories that underpin current economics, are the main roadblocks to making real progress on the issue. If governments and the public aren't willing to face up to hard questions, if we aren't willing to tackle the causes of climate change, i.e., profit before care, unsustainable consumption and destructive land management practices, and the current technological roadmaps are currently unlikely to meet Paris targets by themselves (and BECCS are dubious and the targets are political, not strictly scientific - 1.5C is ambitious though given current trends), then society will have to change anyway, it will just likely be even more chaotic and destructive when social and environmental conditions make change a necessity, rather than mere wisdom.
eBay Huckster: That hardly disqualifies her...You might be surprised to learn that most academics diversify their research interests following their PhD...and many public experts, those you see on TV, are asked about things well beyond the scope of their particular research.
Tylerrob: That is rather simplistic understanding of change...Having said that, most of the science seems to suggest that we are rushing to our collective catastrophe like never before in ecological and resource terms, and even Obama didn't make much head way on this. That is not to say he wasn't hamstrung by real politik - he was, and even then his legacy is being dismantled, which I think the democrats need to shoulder some of the burden for - but fuck modern political practice obsessed with geopolitics and the economy and the dominance of those destructive economic theories that underpin current economics, are the main roadblocks to making real progress on the issue. If governments and the public aren't willing to face up to hard questions, if we aren't willing to tackle the causes of climate change, i.e., profit before care, unsustainable consumption and destructive land management practices, and the current technological roadmaps are currently unlikely to meet Paris targets by themselves (and BECCS are dubious and the targets are political, not strictly scientific - 1.5C is ambitious though given current trends), then society will have to change anyway, it will just likely be even more chaotic and destructive when social and environmental conditions make change a necessity, rather than mere wisdom.
not psycho
Member
This argument isn't actually a response to what it claims to be a response to. Roxane Gay, along with nearly everyone who wishes Clinton won, never thought she was a savior.
Instead it is a separate argument that things quickly getting worse in a transparent manner, while it causes more harm in the short run, will have an Asimov Psychohistory effect that eventually produces a more positive outcome.
My problem with arguments like this, which seemingly always rely on the "corporate Democrat" boogeyman, is that I don't believe, and have seen no proof, that Democrats are that entrenched and inaccessible. For example, are Democrats so entrenched in their corporate position that they would serve as a firewall against single payer health care, even if the country clearly supported it by a wide margin? I just don't think that is the case.
Democrats are not the firewall against progress imo. I see them as being more accessible and amenable to change than Republicans. I even believe (perhaps stupidly?) that Clinton has genuinely changed position on some of the problems of the 1994 crime bill (which Bernie Sanders also voted for...), because there is such a thing as progress and changing minds.
The best argument in favor of "make things worse to make them better" isn't anything to do with Democrats, it's about the people. Obama was not a firewall against progress, he just had almost no chance to do anything with Republicans literally stating their goal was to make him fail, and the people voting Republicans into office. So the hail mary play is to try to make Republicans so toxic to the majority of the public that they can't do that again. Unfortunately I doubt that would ever work because when it comes down to it they could probably run away from Trump at the last second before he nukes us and not get blamed by their supporters.
Instead it is a separate argument that things quickly getting worse in a transparent manner, while it causes more harm in the short run, will have an Asimov Psychohistory effect that eventually produces a more positive outcome.
My problem with arguments like this, which seemingly always rely on the "corporate Democrat" boogeyman, is that I don't believe, and have seen no proof, that Democrats are that entrenched and inaccessible. For example, are Democrats so entrenched in their corporate position that they would serve as a firewall against single payer health care, even if the country clearly supported it by a wide margin? I just don't think that is the case.
Democrats are not the firewall against progress imo. I see them as being more accessible and amenable to change than Republicans. I even believe (perhaps stupidly?) that Clinton has genuinely changed position on some of the problems of the 1994 crime bill (which Bernie Sanders also voted for...), because there is such a thing as progress and changing minds.
The best argument in favor of "make things worse to make them better" isn't anything to do with Democrats, it's about the people. Obama was not a firewall against progress, he just had almost no chance to do anything with Republicans literally stating their goal was to make him fail, and the people voting Republicans into office. So the hail mary play is to try to make Republicans so toxic to the majority of the public that they can't do that again. Unfortunately I doubt that would ever work because when it comes down to it they could probably run away from Trump at the last second before he nukes us and not get blamed by their supporters.
100% Agree. White supremacy doesn't end at people wearing the white hoods or bearing the nazi flag. And the neoliberal scourge would have been more emboldened to so easily sweep black concerns under the rug as they always have as long as they can cling to their banner of 'inclusion'.
When Clinton forcibly threw millions off poor inner city folks of welfare and then claimed he got people off of welfare, that was the power structure of white supremacy destroying black lives.
When Obama used the military industrial complex to destroy or displace hundreds of thousands, or millions of brown faces in the middle east through wars in nations not even officially at war with the united states, that is white supremacy destroying POC across the globe in the governmental structure created by the white man. in the name of white supremacy.
I'm sure to some people it hurts to hear, but its the truth.
When Clinton forcibly threw millions off poor inner city folks of welfare and then claimed he got people off of welfare, that was the power structure of white supremacy destroying black lives.
When Obama used the military industrial complex to destroy or displace hundreds of thousands, or millions of brown faces in the middle east through wars in nations not even officially at war with the united states, that is white supremacy destroying POC across the globe in the governmental structure created by the white man. in the name of white supremacy.
I'm sure to some people it hurts to hear, but its the truth.
Earthpainting
Member
I don't know if that's a really counterpoint. It seems perfectly compatible with the article. As the popular vote made clear, the majority of voting Americans thought Clinton would have been the better choice on the whole. This probably goes double when you take Trump's current approval ratings into consideration. The point of the article though is to specifically address the racial dynamic in the country that's now boiling over. Trump's garbage fire of a presidency is casting light for a lot of Caucasian eyes on the very realities many PoC have been facing their entire lives. We don't have a magic mirror to see into an alternate timeline where Hillary won, but I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that things would continue to barely get acknowledged, just like the decades of presidencies before it. It's understandable in some ways. There's a near infinite amount of problems to focus on, and minority issues usually get pushed at the back of the line because they don't seem as relevant to the country at large. Now that Nazis were comfortable enough to march on the streets, the problem's going to be a lot more relevant to the masses. It sucks that it had to come at the expense of everything else, and the current government's not willing to deal with it, but it's certainly going to be a huge factor in the next election.
I do not blame the author of the article for having this outlook. Her career seems to revolve around racial injustice, and she's going to be more than familiar with the history of the status quo.
curiouscharles
Member
these are some super interesting points to consider actually, thanks for sharing this OP.
it's totally true... is Hillary had won, we'd all just continue going on our merry ways [by us I mean us whiteys], pretending racism is "fading away" and/or gone.
at the very least, with Trump in power and all these closeted racists coming into the light, we are faced with the true size, shape, and colour of its modern day reality.
i can admit, personally, that i was pretty ignorant of how bad it still was - until the 2016 primaries started opening my mind, and then, well, you know, everything else since.
#foodforthought
#greatthread
edit: NOT saying it would be "just as bad" if she had won, not at all, just agreeing that we'd go on largely ignoring the true face of / reality of racism's presence in our society.
like, you can't pop a zit unless it comes to the surface, or something like that.
it's totally true... is Hillary had won, we'd all just continue going on our merry ways [by us I mean us whiteys], pretending racism is "fading away" and/or gone.
at the very least, with Trump in power and all these closeted racists coming into the light, we are faced with the true size, shape, and colour of its modern day reality.
i can admit, personally, that i was pretty ignorant of how bad it still was - until the 2016 primaries started opening my mind, and then, well, you know, everything else since.
#foodforthought
#greatthread
edit: NOT saying it would be "just as bad" if she had won, not at all, just agreeing that we'd go on largely ignoring the true face of / reality of racism's presence in our society.
like, you can't pop a zit unless it comes to the surface, or something like that.